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Of course, our very own Lorikeet (she does occasionally post here and is known as @PenguinGalaxy on Twitter) is the Alice Sheppard who gets more than a passing mention in the article...

Well done to Alice and all the other Zooites!

If anyone wants to try their hand at classifying galaxies, I'm sure they will be made more than welcome!

Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Thank you so much Alan, for pointing out Galaxy Zoo. I had not read it because I only read bits of the paper - what a waste! Anyway I dug out the Observer from last night's armchair and made the article my breakfast reading. Almost had me in tears - from the great man Darwin and all the letters he wrote to all and sundry to the brilliant Lorikeet that I feel is a friend. Thank you again.

(Hmmm - posting the hotlink to the picture didn't work! If you want to have a closer look at it, this link.)

It was the first interesting galaxy I spotted. Its actual name is ARP 142 - it's part of the Arp catalogue, a collection of peculiar galaxies. It's two galaxies merging - the one that looks like a bird's head is a very warped spiral with a dust lane. A friend's husband named it "the penguin galaxy" and the name stuck